Enquire to Inspire: The Innovation Team Mentoring Book
20 Questions to Mentor Your Innovation Team to Success
Prefer to order from me? $24.99 shipped, US only.
Preview the Book
Transform Your Leadership Through the Power of Questions
Stop managing people with answers and start mentoring them with questions. This book will free you from the burden of directive management for the satisfaction of mentoring through questions—and it will free your team from the constraints that limit the quality of their work and their lives.
My concise 106-page book will teach you how to:
- Understand and help create the micro-culture required for your team to run fast, lean, and focused as they navigate ambiguity
- Use permission and resources to keep your team from getting "stuck"—and identify those moments to get them back on track quickly
- Mentor your teams to successful outcomes with provocative questions through every stage of the design process
A Personal Note
Proceeds from this book will help build a trust fund for my disabled son to ensure that he is able to live in safety and receive professional care after my wife and I are no longer physically able to care for him.
By purchasing this book, you're not only investing in your leadership journey but also contributing to this important cause.
What Does the Book Sound Like?
It sounds like a coach talking across a table. Chapter 1 opens as a love story about project workers, then turns to the corporate incubator where Bill first watched sponsors mentor instead of manage. Here is that passage, straight from the free sample chapter.
Read the full sample chapter (PDF)Years ago, I had an opportunity to coach a small team in a corporate incubator setting. An astute tactical component of the incubator was a director-level sponsor for each team. The sponsor’s role was to mentor the team, help maintain their scope, and provide necessary resources to keep them moving fast. Our incubator sponsors quickly took delight in the fact that they didn’t need to manage the people on these teams, they simply needed to support them as they took risks to better understand the problems they were formed to solve. I was pleased to see the relationships between the sponsors and their teams bloom under these conditions, as they were refreshingly different than the more formal, hierarchical manager-employee interactions I was used to.
In this environment I learned how the right working relationships can make the difference between success and failure for project teams. And as I folded design, agile, and startup mindsets and methodologies into this fertile setting, I watched people change in compellingly positive ways as they delivered valuable business results. Work became fun because they were doing demonstrably important, impactful work that mattered and was appreciated in a rapid-feedback cycle. They saw the effect of their work quickly and regularly, and they had a sponsor who made sure that the team’s work products were broadly shared and publicly credited. The experience has inspired every day of my life since that time. My passion is to re-create these conditions wherever I can.
What You'll Discover Inside
Practical insights and actionable strategies to transform your leadership approach
Master the Art of Team Sponsorship
Learn how to assemble the right cross-functional team, establish environments of trust and psychological safety, help set team scope and direction, provide resources, and advocate for your team. You'll discover how to mentor through enquiry, not advocacy.
Unlock Customer-Driven Innovation
Discover how to ask "How do you know?" to prompt teams to validate assumptions and learn deeply about customers through observation and experiments. See how insights fuel prototypes to test value delivery, and how even "failures" provide valuable learning.
Transform from Manager to Mentor
Break free from traditional management approaches that limit people's potential. Learn how to use provocative questions that expand your team's thinking while maintaining focus, helping them move quickly toward customer-driven outcomes.
Navigate the Full Innovation Journey
The book guides you through each phase of innovation work—from team formation to scaling solutions to transitioning ownership—with practical questions to ask at each step. Real stories of success and failure bring these concepts to life.
Click on the book covers and contents to enlarge
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back
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What Leaders Are Saying
Insights from professionals who have applied these principles
Book Overview
A Journey Through Innovation Leadership
This concise 106-page guide is designed for busy leaders who want to transform their approach to team mentorship:
Book Details
Enquire to Inspire: 20 Questions to Mentor Your Innovation Team to Success is a 106-page softcover by Bill Murray, published in December 2023 by coachingup.us, the imprint of FifthWhy, LLC. It is written in English and organized around 20 primary questions a sponsor can ask an innovation team, one stage at a time.
About the Author
Frequently Asked Questions About Enquire to Inspire
Five short answers: what the book covers, who it is for, how long it is, who wrote it, and where to buy a copy. If your question isn’t here, email coach@coachingup.us.
What is Enquire to Inspire about?
Enquire to Inspire is a 106-page guide by Bill Murray that teaches leaders how to mentor innovation teams through questions rather than directives. It covers team formation, customer discovery, building insights from observations, prototyping, scaling solutions, and transitioning ownership — with 20 practical questions to guide each stage.
Who is the book for?
The book is for anyone who sponsors, manages, or mentors innovation teams — including startup founders, corporate innovation leaders, entrepreneurship educators, non-profit executives, and government program managers. It is especially valuable for leaders who want to move from directive management to question-based mentoring.
How long is Enquire to Inspire?
Enquire to Inspire is a concise 106-page softcover book designed for busy leaders. It includes 8 chapters covering the full innovation journey plus appendices with team interaction planning guides and a curated reading list.
Who is the author Bill Murray?
Bill Murray is an innovation coach and evangelist who has coached customer discovery and product design teams at companies and startups of all sizes across six continents. He is the founder of CoachingUP.us and is available for speaking engagements and workshops.
Where can I buy Enquire to Inspire?
Enquire to Inspire is sold on Amazon as a paperback (list price $19.99) and a Kindle edition, and Amazon’s stores outside the United States carry it too. In the United States you can also order directly from Bill for $24.99, which includes shipping. Proceeds help build a trust fund for the author’s disabled son.
Transform Your Leadership Today
Stop managing people with answers and start mentoring them with questions that drive true innovation.
Prefer to order from me? $24.99 shipped, US only.
Want to apply the book's principles with your team? Work directly with Bill.
Book a Free Coaching CallGo deeper
- The 3-Hour Innovation Plan — put the book’s questions to work on your own idea, three sessions, $300.
- About Bill Murray — the coach and author (not the actor), and how he works.
- The Power of Questions in Innovation — why a great question stings, and why that is the point.
- How to Choose an Innovation Coach — five qualities, and the contract terms to insist on.
- All free guides